Recent Content by Hummingbird

Not every straight man minds if two men are making out. It might be awkward, but only to the degree that watching anybody making out in a public place is.

As long as the commercial follows normal standards of decency, I don't see what's so bad about showing it on whatever channel they please. It's not like kids aren't exposed to displays of affection by adults anyway - why does it make a difference if it happens to be two guys instead of a male and a female? It's this kind of sheltering from reality that feeds bigotry and ignorance regarding sexuality. You can't hide kids from the real world forever, and if some people didn't try so damn hard, maybe society as a whole would be more accepting of people who are the least bit different from the norm.

The idea that anything that isn't natural is inherently bad is just ridiculous. I'd argue that anything that occurs in the real world is natural though I'm guessing that's not what you mean by the word. However, if you think anything "unnatural" is wrong, you'd better get off that computer of yours, skip out into the woods and start feeding on those berries and acorns.

But for the sake of argument, let us accept the proposal that because A does not occur in nature, it is therefor wrong: homosexuality still wouldn't fall under that category. Homosexual behavior has been observed in well over 1000 animal species so it most definitely does occur in nature. A simple Google search would tell you as much. Wikipedia has quite an extensive list of footnotes and external links regarding the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals

And I know we were supposed to lay off the religion, but I refuse to let someone set up a strawman like this and not get called on it:

This is pure BS and shows that you don't really have any idea what the atheist position is. Atheism is not the belief that there are no gods - it is merely the position that one is not convinced that a god/gods exists. That is not the same as believing the opposite. I don't understand how you were able to define atheism so eloquently, yet completely miss the actual meaning of the word. Atheism includes everybody who does not have an active belief in a god/gods. Within that category there are sub-categories, namely "weak atheists" who have not accepted the existence of a deity/deities but are not convinced that there are no gods, and the "strong atheists" who actively believe there are no gods. The so called "weak atheist" position is often confused with agnosticism, but in reality, agnosticism and atheism are not mutually exclusive positions. This is for the simple reason that whereas theism and atheism deal with belief, gnosticism and agnosticism deal with knowledge. This gives us 4 positions one can hold in regards to gods:

1. The gnostic theist - a person who not only believes in the existence of god(s), but is certain one exists.

2. The agnostic theist - a person who accepts the existence of god(s), but does not elevate their belief to the level of knowledge.

3. The agnostic atheist - a person who does not accept the existence of god(s) as true, but isn't entirely convinced there couldn't be one.

4. The gnostic atheist - a person who actively believes there are no gods.

Should you (or anybody else for that matter) want to discuss this in further detail, send me a pm as I'm sure the staff doesn't want this topic to get derailed any more.

Level 1, Proud Mode. I used cheats to give myself the No Experience ability and to give +50 AP like in Critical Mode. Also, level 1 in Critical Mode on my Final Mix playthrough. Sephiroth isn't really that hard - you can see his moves coming from a mile away and the only attack that might be somewhat hard to block (but not to dodge as you can just Glide out of reach) is his physical attack in his third phase and that's only because of the insane range it has. The keyblade doesn't really matter, all it does is make the battle longer or shorter, not harder.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has noticed these things although I don't agree with your third point. The only battle animations that took an unnecessarily long time were certain reaction commands. It's funny how the game only becomes remotely challenging once you slap on a no-experience code (although I took the liberty of boosting my AP) and even then, the only fights that were actually hard were Demyx, Sephiroth and Xaldin and that's because countering their extremely predictable attack patterns actually requires some timing by the player. Thankfully a level 1 Critical Mode challenge in FM+ was a bit more challenging.

My biggest problem with KH II was the bland character and story development. Sora jumped back a couple of years in maturity and intelligence between CoM and KH II, wasn't the least bit believable and was just generally annoying. Basically they decided there's no need for all the things that made Sora a good main character. Character interaction was also practically inexistent and the dialogue just seemed bland. The story was just a bunch of very loosely connected scenes, most of which weren't even interesting and once you've seen them once, you simply don't want to see them again. The scenes in both KH 1 and CoM (which I've played through 9 and 20+ times respectively) still keep my interest up to this very day whereas I already happily spammed the skip scene command in KH II as soon as on my second playthrough. There was absolutely no room for character development for any characters in the game because they were never given enough screentime. What happened to the scenes where you could see things from the villains' perspective? There are very few of those in KH II and they worked so well in KH 1 and CoM to give an insight on what's happening. The story and characters in this game were so uninteresting completing it didn't feel rewarding at all.

It's ironic how CoM is more like a "true" sequel to Kingdom Hearts than KH II even though its only purpose was to serve as a bridge between the two PS 2 games. The game was much shorter than KH II and yet, it provided a much more fleshed-out story, had some great character development, managed to give every character as much attention as they deserved and actually made it possible to relate to the characters. The antagonists in the game were so much better than in KH II. Whoever said Sai'x is cruel obviously didn't pay much attention to Marluxia and Larxene and CoM actually made Axel and Riku seem like interesting characters contrary to KH II. The R/R crew could have gotten some more attention, but R/R covered everything important from Riku's perspective so I have no complaints. Traveling through the worlds got a bit repetitive sometimes, but the between floors-scenes made up for that. And let's not forget that awesome mind-screw with the Riku Replica.

I hope I don't have to explain why the first game is infinitely better than KH II.

Can you really count countless hours of doing frustrating minigames as actual playtime? I'd rather go watch paint dry than play any of the minigames in KH II. The actual game (the part that doesn't make you want to throw your PS2 out through the window) itself is not very long at all. It only took me about 16 hours to finish it.

I'll have to go against the majority here and say that CoM had the best overall storyline (although the first game had the best individual scenes) and that the story of KH II was a disappointment. CoM had so much more character development than the other games and even though it was the first KH game I played, the story made far more sense than that of KH II when I already knew the story of the two previous games. In CoM, Sora went from a rather naive, but still likable character to a total ****** and back to being likable, but definitely more mature whereas in KH II, he's just... stupid and incredibly annoying.

Chain of Memories was also the only Kingdom Hearts game where I actually took interest in Riku. Riku is definitely the character that has developed the most during the timeline of Kingdom Hearts and it's all thanks to Chain of Memories. In both other games, I just found Riku to be really annoying, but in CoM, I actually liked him as a character. The character cast in general also seemed much more fleshed out and believable in CoM than it did in the other games. (though KH II the weakest game in this aspect as well)

In terms of appearance, I like the Oathkeeper. It looks so shiny and neat. :3 Plus, I love the sound it makes when you hit enemies with it. O.o

In terms of ability and such, Decisive Pumpkin is my favorite. Sure the MP rate boost from Ultima Weapon is nice, but the insane damage boost you get from Decisive Pumpkin with a couple of Combo Pluses more than makes up for the lower MP replenishing rate. Especially on level 1 playthroughs, Decisive Pumpkin's Combo Boost makes a huge difference. Explosion with Decisive Pumpkin equipped can actually deal a decent amount of damage even at level 1.

The second Riku battle in Hollow Bastion. Everything about the battle is just so incredibly epic. That background music alone is enough reason to love the fight. I spent 30 minutes just guarding his attacks and getting some tech points against him when I played Final Mix.

Other fights that deserve a mention are Ice Titan, Phantom (freakin' amazing battle, seriously <3) and Xemnas in Final Mix. Thanks to Leaf Veil, Xemnas was incredibly easy, but the fight was cool nonetheless.

Since nobody explained IVs yet, I'll try explaining the basics and keeping it simple:

IVs (short for Individual Values) are a hidden value each Pokémon possesses. Unlike EVs, IVs cannot be changed without the use of a cheating device. A normal wild Pokémon has randomly generated IVs ranging from 0 to 31. At level 100, each IV point will raise the stat by one - at lower levels, IVs have a smaller impact. However, while breeding, two stats from each parent will be passed down to the baby. If the same stat is chosen from both parents, I believe it will be random which parent's IV is passed down. I'll use my current breeding project as an example. My goal is to breed an Adamant Magikarp with the following IVs: 30 - 31 HP, 29 - 31 Attack, 28 - 31 Defense, 28 - 31 Special Defense and 31 Speed. Obviously catching such a Magikarp in the wild would be extremely hard, but with the right breeding parents, my chances are significantly higher. I have one parent with 31 HP, 30 Defense and 31 Speed and another one with 29 Attack, 30 Defense, 31 Speed and 31 Special Defense. Thanks to these "genes", my chances of obtaining that ideal Gyarados are much higher. In a good scenario, the mother (the first one) would pass on its HP and either its Speed or Defense stat whereas the father would pass on its Attack stat and its Speed or Defense (depending on which one the mother passed) or its Special Defense, leaving only one of the desired stats to the random number generator. Naturally, my babies will have a higher chance of obtaining the desired Speed or Defense stat due to both parents having it, whereas Attack, HP and Special Defense are less likely to be inherited because only one of the parents possesses a desired IV in one of these stats.

Bleh, got a little carried away and got a bit into IV breeding here, but the basics of IV breeding are good to know if you ever intend to play competitively. (and you won't really need to know about EVs unless you do)

Not quite right. A level 1 Pokémon will not gain 63 points in one stat after level up just because its EVs in a stat have been maxed out. The +1 boost in a stat for every 4 EV points applies only to level 100 Pokémon.

Just out of curiosity: are there any competitive battlers here on this forum? Competitive as in, people who actually care about IVs, EVs, natures and all that and play either on simulators (Netbattle, Shoddy) or on Wi-fi.

And either way, I'd like to know if anyone here has Bold or Calm natured Suicune (that is under level 100 so that it's possible to EV train it) from Pokémon Colosseum (since the legendary beasts in FR/LG always seem to have horrible IVs) they'd be willing to trade?

That's Iron Island, not Newmoon or Fullmoon Island. (and the former of the two is only accessible through cheating for the time being and is where you'll encounter Darkrai.)

This statement is just idiotic. The majority of Final Fantasy games are extremely overrated. (yes, I'm looking at you, FF VII) The early FF games were good, (namely VI and IV) but after that, it's mainly been going downhill. FF VII and VIII were both crap, FF IX was an improvement from those (and my personal favorite although from an unbiased viewpoint, I'd say IV and VI were better) and I can't say anything about FF X since I haven't played that. The only reason I like FF XII is that I just can't get enough of beating the crap out of monsters, but so far it seems pretty bad to me. (although I haven't finished it yet) A real gamer doesn't have to be a Final Fantasy fanboy - just because a series is popular doesn't mean you can't call yourself a real gamer without having played it. In my opinion, you're not a true gamer if you haven't played real RPGs such as the Lufia games, (although the mechanics in the first game are a bit meh and The Legends Return got a bit tedious later on. RoL doesn't even deserve the title of Lufia and is nothing but a crappy spin-off at best) the Mana series (Sword of Mana is a true classic and Seiken Densetsu 3 is very underrated, but in my personal opinion, a great improvement) and Chrono Trigger. Compared to those, Final Fantasy honestly isn't that great. They're not horrible games, but there are so many RPGs out there that are much better. Hence why I think one can call himself a gamer without having played Final Fantasy.

Teeming Darkness and Looming Darkness are the two cards I use the most. Both create a room with a lot of heartless for experience harvesting as well as a large amount of obstacles for easy Moogle Point mining.

My personal favorite is Final Fantasy IX. I really liked many of the character in the game (namely Zidane, Beatrix, Kuja and Vivi as well as Quina for the comedic relief) and I simply love the soundtrack. I absolutely love the normal battle theme and the boss theme isn't too bad either. It also contains masterpieces such as Forgotten Face, Loss of Me and Dark Messenger, and heck - just about every track in the game was awesome. I also found the growth system in the game - thanks to that, very few pieces of equipment were practically useless. The story was something I also enjoyed very much although it was a bit confusing at times. Still a major improvement from FF VII and VIII in my opinion. Also, on the Final Fantasy scale, the battle system was relatively balanced. (which doesn't say much, but still) I like how it's not possible to get ridiculous amounts of hits, each dealing ridiculous damage in one turn. Yes, I'm looking at you, Omnislash, 4x Cut and Lionheart. The fact that each character has a pre-defined class also appealed to me - the only thing that differentiated the characters in both FF VII and VIII from each other was how broken each character's limit break is whereas each character in FF IX has their own role. (although Freya and Steiner do pretty much the same thing later on - deal 9999 damage with the cost of some MP and Zidane had very few useful abilities)

So yeah, it's definitely FF IX for me. I absolutely love that game although the low difficulty was a letdown.

Uh, my team changes quite a lot. I have 24 EV trained Pokémon and my team depends completely on what I feel like using. Since I've recently started recording my Wi-fi battles and uploading them on Youtube, I pretty much have to use different Pokémon all the time - otherwise my opponent would know my team in advance. I do, however, have a couple of Pokémon that I use in nearly every battle since they simply do their job so much better than any other one of my Pokémon would. Those Pokémon are Blissey, Starmie and Gliscor/Donphan. Blissey simply because whether any of us like it or not, it is - always has been, and always will be - the best special wall in the game. Starmie is not only one of my favorite Pokémon design-wise, but firing off Choice Specs boosted Surfs, Ice Beams and Thunderbolts off a 100 base Special Attack is always cool. Goold ol' Mie Tarzan has saved me too many times for me not to use it. That guy's never been dead weight on my team. <3 As for Gliscor and Donphan, I never use both on the same team since both serve the same purpose - taking just about any physical hit thrown at them and scaring away the attacker. I love Donphan for its ability to Stealth Rock and Rapid Spin away opposing Spikes and Stealth Rocks, but lack of recovery really hurts the poor guy, (gal in my Donphan's case) which is why I often go with Gliscor instead. I've never liked Skarmory as my wall for some reason, (the only time I've ever used it was in a mono type Flying team on Netbattle back in the good ol' days of the 3rd generation) but I fell in love with Gliscor the instant I used it. It takes most physical hits like nothing and is actually threatening on the offensive side as well.

On Shoddybattle (a free online Pokémon simulator) I have about 4 teams that I use quite frequently. One is a Hail team, one revolves around Sandstream and one is just intended to beat the living hell out of the opponent, but my favorite team so far would have to be the following:

Crobat (M) @ Choice Band
Ability: Inner Focus
EVs: 4 HP/252 Atk/252 Spd
Jolly nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Brave Bird
- Pursuit
- U-turn
- Cross Poison
---
Heatran (M) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 20 HP/236 Spd/252 SAtk
Modest nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Fire Blast
- Earth Power
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Explosion
---
Gliscor (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Hyper Cutter
EVs: 252 HP/4 Atk/252 Def
Impish nature (+Def, -SAtk)
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge
- Knock Off
- Roost
---
Walrein (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 252 HP/252 Def
Bold nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Encore
- Substitute
- Toxic
- Hidden Power [Electric]
---
Celebi @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP/4 Spd/252 SDef
Careful nature (+SDef, -SAtk)
- Heal Bell
- Recover
- U-turn
- Leech Seed
---
Forretress (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP/96 Def/162 SDef
Impish nature (+Def, -SAtk)
- Light Screen
- Spikes
- Earthquake
- Rapid Spin
---

I really want to get this team on a cartridge, but where am I going to get my hands on a legit Calm Celebi with usable IVs?

I don't know if that was sarcasm or not, but you do realize that a team of 6 Wobbuffets loses to anything with Swords Dance, Nasty Plot, Calm Mind or Toxic, don't you?

The following things are traits that attract me in girls:

• A sense of humor.
• Interest in literature - I want to be able to discuss books with a girl.
• She shouldn't be too optimistic, but has to be able to see the bright sides in things.
• Common sense - yeah, stupidity doesn't attract me.
• She has to be someone I can be myself with and does the same with me.
• I have to be able to talk to her without the conversation feeling forced.
• She has to possess a certain level of maturity and intelligence - if I can't have a serious conversation with someone, I honestly don't see how it'd work out between us.
• She has to be able to stand up for herself - I want a girl who doesn't let other people's opinions influence her own.
• And last but not least, I want someone who accepts me the way I am - yeah I want a girl who's okay with a guy playing Pokémon, good luck with that. =P

Those are the most important things, there are other things that I find attractive as well, but those things are must-haves. Surprisingly, I've actually met a girl who matches all those criteria, but I'm pretty sure I've already screwed up my chances with her, (if I even had any to begin with) but having her for a friend is good enough for me.

That's exactly what I've been telling my friend for a long time now. o.o I'm not into plushies, but I'd definitely buy a Shadow one. I love those little rascals. :3

Another cute heartless is the Stealth Sneak. Come on, it's adorable! <3